Study identifies retailers most at risk from showrooming

New research from Placed.com, into the effects of showrooming on retailers, identifies those businesses that are most at risk of losing business to Amazon.

According to Placed.com founder and CEO, David Shim, significantly more retailers are at risk of losing sales to Amazon via showrooming than previously thought.

"All the attention to date has been on Target and Best Buy as the early victims of showrooming, but significantly more retailers are at risk," says Shim in a recent announcement of the new research, 'Placed: Aisle to Amazon Study'. "Retailers need to know that it's not a question of if or when showrooming will impact their business, as an aisle to Amazon is already in their store."

The results confirm that both Best Buy and Target are among the top retailers at risk from showrooming, however other retailers faced a stronger threat.

According to Placed.com's research, showroomers were 20% more likely to trawl the aisles of Best Buy and 15% more likely than average to visit Target. However, Bed Bath & Beyond were more at risk with 27% of showroomers more likely to visit the retailer. In fact, Best Buy came fourth in Placed.com's index, behind Bed Bath & Beyond, PetSmart (25%), and Toys'R'Us (21%). Target (15%) was in eighth place behind Sears (19%), Barnes and Noble (18%) and Kohl's (17%).

"Amazon was the clear winner in e-commerce 1.0, and unless brick-and-mortar retailers shift from reactive to proactive, Amazon will win e-commerce 2.0 on the backs of offline retailers," warned Shim.

The full report, which was based 14,925 U.S. survey respondents combined with the direct measurement of nearly 1 billion U.S. location data points during January 2013, is available online.